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Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Some Chicago school officials are reacting to higher standards by falsifying records

By Ben Velderman -

CHICAGO – A new report finds that one Chicago public high school is having a problem with ghosts.

More specifically, the school is being populated in part by “ghost students”— nonexistent kids that the school’s dishonest principal and her assistant have been using to pad the school’s enrollment numbers, and therefore, the school’s budget.

That’s just one of the revelations in Chicago Public Schools Inspector General Jim Sullivan’s new report on the wrongdoing that he uncovered in the nation’s fourth-largest school district during 2013, according to the Chicago Tribune.

The falsification and manipulation of school data seems to be the theme of Sullivan’s report.

For instance, one Chicago elementary principal allegedly changed grades to allow children to graduate to the next level.

“We do have a concern about (Chicago Public Schools) data as evidenced by the cases we had this year,” Sullivan said, adding that much of the data “is created and can be manipulated at the school level.”

He believes the increase in fake data is due to the fact that “schools, teachers and principals (are) increasingly being tracked and evaluated based upon data on everything from student assessment scores to attendance,” the Tribune reports.

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Some Chicago school officials are reacting to higher standards by falsifying records

By Ben Velderman -

CHICAGO – A new report finds that one Chicago public high school is having a problem with ghosts.

More specifically, the school is being populated in part by “ghost students”— nonexistent kids that the school’s dishonest principal and her assistant have been using to pad the school’s enrollment numbers, and therefore, the school’s budget.

That’s just one of the revelations in Chicago Public Schools Inspector General Jim Sullivan’s new report on the wrongdoing that he uncovered in the nation’s fourth-largest school district during 2013, according to the Chicago Tribune.

The falsification and manipulation of school data seems to be the theme of Sullivan’s report.

For instance, one Chicago elementary principal allegedly changed grades to allow children to graduate to the next level.

“We do have a concern about (Chicago Public Schools) data as evidenced by the cases we had this year,” Sullivan said, adding that much of the data “is created and can be manipulated at the school level.”

He believes the increase in fake data is due to the fact that “schools, teachers and principals (are) increasingly being tracked and evaluated based upon data on everything from student assessment scores to attendance,” the Tribune reports.